Journey to profits: valuing the customer experience success story

What is the value of a good customer experience? From decades of experience, we usually quote around 20% EBITDA growth for companies who have a strategic focus and strong execution. However, almost everyone has low-hanging fruit in this area which can be harvested easily, as in this case study which delivered 5.5% growth. Nothing wrong with taking an initial tactical approach, prove the benefits, pocket the money, and then decide how to move forward.

The Insurance industry has traditionally been particularly poor at delivering excellent customer experience and slow to implement improvement programmes such at the Net Promoter System. There are many reasons for this, including a history of growing by acquisition, a product-centric view of the business, and a legacy where the return on investments used to be the main driver of profits. In the low-yield economic climate of the last decade or more living off investments is clearly no longer a viable business strategy, and so the industry is slowly discovering that it has customers, not just policies.

We positioned the project as ‘sales leakage’. Clearly, there are times in the interactions with the customer when unmet needs are identified and opportunities for additional sales present themselves. The classic example is during the claims handling process which is typically when the customer understands the value of the product and the extent of his cover.

Are you convinced that every opportunity for additional sales is captured and followed up, no matter where it presents itself in you organization?

Neither was this company.

So they mapped the entire customer journey across brands, geographies, carriers, channels, and all customer trigger points to identify commercial opportunities in a four-step approach:

From this, a high-level opportunity map was created for the executive teams identifying 12 opportunity areas, ten of which could be quantified with available data as new revenues totalling over GBP 33 million (USD 52m, SEK 350m) gross written premium.

The executive team had full confidence in the results and all bought into and committed to delivering the opportunities identified. There was a clear recognition of the need for organizational change to include a Customer Value Management function.

The whole project lasted less than four months covering two main brands in two countries.

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CYBAEA

CYBAEA are value and growth architects for the data economy. We are passionate about value creation and delivering commercial results. We help organizations identify and act upon opportunities in Customer Value Management (CVM), Customer Experience (CX) and Advocacy, and Innovation and Growth.